Debut Thriller with a Love Story Wrapped inside Redefines Historical Fiction -111

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Kristi Leonard [: 00:00:03

Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time, and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know some of your favorite writers in a new light. I'm one of your hosts, Christy Leonard, owner and host of Writers in the Wild Retreats, nonfiction voice over artist, and president of WFWA. I'm excited to share with you a little about today's guest.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:00:35

An Austin, Texas transplant, Kay Smith Blum is a recovering retailer who is redefining the historical fiction genre from her bayside perch in Seattle. The recent upheaval over leaking radioactive waste tanks at the Hanford nuclear site compelled her to write Tangles, named book of the year by literary global book awards and best debut fiction by the American Writing Awards in 2024. Smith Blum, a Sunrise writer, has lived in the Pacific Northwest for 4 decades. She works out her writer's block in her son's gardens and in the nearest lap pool. Welcome, Kay.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:01:13

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:01:16

I know. Well, your book is gonna be so exciting to talk about, but we always start with the same question. Tell me the most interesting thing about where you're from.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:01:27

So I was born and raised in Austin, Texas when it was still weird. And I have been so excited to kind of go back and see the transformation. Oh. But when I tell newfound friends in Austin, particularly South Austin where I was raised, which is the cool part of town now, in those days, it was the other side of town. Oh, interesting. Because I was raised in a very middle class family. When I tell people where I'm from, they're like, oh my gosh. No one can even afford a house there now.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:02:04

Ain't that funny? So it's the weirdest thing how things change.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:02:09

Yeah. Definitely. I think that's happening in a lot of places.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:02:12

Yep. Gentrification is real.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:02:15

There you go. That's the word I was thinking of. So I really like to get to know my authors a little bit, and our read our listeners, I should say, also do. So I'm gonna ask you. I I've been told I ask difficult questions, but, hopefully, they're not too difficult. So what is a decision that you made in your life that you're most proud of?

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:02:38

Probably to become a mother. That was a very conscious decision. And it was at a point when we had a very successful business and I'd already been in high end fashion retail. I worked for Neiman Marcus for almost a decade before marrying Butch, my husband, who had already established the 1st European fashion store in the northwest.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:03:01

Wow.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:03:02

And we grew that business together, And we're very successful at the point where I knew it was time. It was now or never. And I've never looked back.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:03:11

Right. That's awesome. And you said you have 3 boys. Right?

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:03:18

3 wonderful humans, all boys.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:03:21

Yeah. They're not really boys anymore. Right? They're men?

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:03:23

No. Case, our oldest, who is an architect and now a entrepreneur just turned 39. And our twin sons, our identical twin sons, Kyle and Bryce, just turned 36 a few months ago. And they're both in careers that they love, and they're all folks who are very attuned to others, and that's a wonderful thing.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:03:42

That's awesome. It sure is. I am actually also a twin.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:03:52

Yay.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:03:52

That's always the thing when people ask, you know, when you're in a group setting and they're like, well, tell us something that people wouldn't automatically know about you. And that was the strangest thing for me because growing up, everybody knew that I was a twin because that was, like, a weird thing or interesting thing.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:04:07

Right.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:04:08

And then, you know, once I moved away from my twin, like, people didn't know unless I told them, and that was the weirdest thing. I'm sure your sons can.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:04:15

Yeah. And another strange thing is Bryce, one of our identical twins, had identical twin boys also.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:04:22

Oh, my my twin sister had twin girls as well.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:04:27

Yeah. Exactly.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:04:30

Twin show today. Yes. It is. Oh, that's funny. Alright. Let's get to the fun stuff. I wanna talk about your book. We like to make this really hard and make you summarize your book in one sentence.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:04:42

So, hopefully, you had I warned you ahead of time. Hopefully, you had some time to think about it, but let let's see what you did.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:04:49

So Tangles is at once sort of labyrinthine, but simply and deeply human. And I'm quoting James Anderson, who gave me a marvelous endorsement. Nice. When I say that it reminds the reader of the devastating and lasting costs of love and loyalty and freedom. And above all, it shows the enduring solace of nature and family. The plot itself, when evidence surfaces that the Hanford nuclear plant is endangering all life in the Columbia Basin, a brash young scientist seizes the chance to avenge his father's death from radiation poisoning only to discover that the disappearance of his much beloved neighbor is also tied to the government harmful practices.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:05:37

Yeah. Super twisty, interesting, crazy that there is truth behind the story. It's pretty amazing actually to think that these kinds of things happen in the world and does make you a little bit angry. I won't lie. There were there were quite a few times when I was reading it that I was like, oh.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:05:57

Right. Yeah. And it is every event in the book is based on true events or real personal accounts, whether it's something that happens to a character like being diagnosed with cancer, or whether it's something that happens within the wildlife or along the river, or whether it's references to scientific experiments that were ongoing Right. As the government tracked the effects from day 1 from the moment in 19 44 that they began the 1st reactor. That's the part I'm the most proud of, being able to weave that real evidence that was released in classified files not until Hanford had been operating for almost 50 years were those files released. And when they did, it caused a huge explosion of public comment.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:06:49

You think?

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:06:50

And not to mention plethora of nonfiction books. In fact, one of the endorsements that I received was from Joshua Frank who wrote Atomic Days, and it really is it's only about 2 years old that came out in 2023.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:07:05

And he and I are gonna do a town hall together in Seattle this next month. But Joshua, when he read my book, immediately pointed out that not only was it a captivating story, but it reveals so much about our atomic legacy that's true.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:07:20

Yes. Well, so my first question, I just think you masterfully intertwined, like, personal stories with the broader historical backdrop of the consequences, the environmental and social. What inspired you to delve into this particular piece of history? And how did you balance the factual elements with the deeply human emotional narratives of your characters?

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:07:50

The original inspiration for pivotal scene in the book came from a dream. I woke up one morning and I thought, Wait, what was that? And I rarely have recurring dreams. And this one recurred the next night. And when I woke up, I wrote it down in my dream journal. And it was I had been in my dream, I've been standing on a pier above the ocean, like the Santa Monica Pier, which I've been on many times, Right. Looking over into the water and I'd seen this mass of tangled red hair on the water. Oh, wow. But it wasn't wet.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:08:29

And when I realized it wasn't wet, that's what woke me up because then I knew it was like, wait, what is that? It's not someone swimming. It's something more. And so I wrote it all down in my dream journal the 2nd night that I had the dream. And that same afternoon, I ran into a friend who I'd known had grown up in the Tri Cities. And that's where Richland, the company built town for Hanford is. It's Richland, Kenrick, and Pasco are the Tri Cities all along the Columbia River. I knew her mother had been struggling from breast cancer.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:09:02

And I was asking after her mother and her mother had had a double mastectomy, but her prognosis was good. And then my friend said, but, you know, that's what happens when you are born and raised near the area. And I thought the area what? So then I asked a little bit about the area, and that sure enough. That was what the locals called Hanford, and they referred to it as the area for decades. Right? And I thought, okay, well, that's bizarre. And I sort of filed that away.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:09:34

And then 2 days later, I ran into a guy who I've known for a long time. He used to model for us when we had our high end fashion store. And he mentioned something about Richland. And I was like, wait. You're from Richland? He goes, oh, yeah. Born and raised. Born there in 1948, raised there. And I said, so what do you know about the area? He said, well, my father, my uncles, they all worked in the area and they used to pick up my father's urine after a holiday weekend to test his urine, and then they would scan his boots that he had to put out on the front porch with this little thermometer looking thing.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:10:16

And I said, what? So then that was it. So then I went home and I went down a rabbit hole because I was familiar with Hanford. When I ran for school board in the late 2000s, I was running in the same cycle with Jerry Pollock who was running for state legislature. And Jerry had founded Heart of America Northwest, which was the advocacy group that was holding the Department of Energy and the Department of Ecology at the state level, holding their feet to the fire around the Hanford cleanup because Hanford had already been designated as not 1 but 3 Superfund sites. So Jerry, during the course of the campaign, you know, we were showing up the same forms and stuff. And Jerry was sort of educating me about Hanford, which was the main reason he was running, right, for state legislature.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:11:07

Oh you had it coming from all directions. There was no way you were not gonna write this book.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:11:13

I did. So I I had that base knowledge. Right? And then when I had these other 2 friendship conversations, I thought, wait, I've gotta get on the phone with Jerry and find out what's going on. And sure enough, I had seen a headline about some of the tanks that they had stored radioactive waste in leaking. And Jerry gave me a huge amount of information about how they were leaking, why they were leaking, how the cleanup was working, why vitrification wasn't working, which is encasing the radioactive waste and glass. That's how they thought they would solve the problem, but they were having lots of technical problems around that method. And then that was it. I went down a rabbit hole of 9 months worth of research and multiple conversations with all kinds of experts.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:11:59

Well, it shows in the book that you did your research for certain. So what challenges did you face in keeping the 2, Mary and Luke's, stories distinct?

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:12:13

So that was hard because I wanted to write them for both in first person. With Mary, I did a deep dive into Idaho vernacular. And one of the most satisfying comments I've gotten back from readers is she's from Idaho. She was born and raised in Idaho. And she said, you had me at Jockey Box, which is what Idaho folks call the glove box, right, in your car. So I I did some of that, but then I also, I wanted to make their narrative and the way they spoke distinctively different. So with Mary, I tried to draw out not long sentences necessarily. But when you read it, you would have to draw it out in your mind.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:12:56

Like, what did she just say? What are those words really mean? With Luke, it was much more clipped and brash, hence the brash on the scientist. Right?

Kristi Leonard [: 00:13:05

Yeah. You did a great job at it.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:13:06

Yeah. Thank you.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:13:09

We are almost at the end of our 15 minutes. I can't believe how fast that went. Our listeners really like to know how to find you. I'm sure they could just do a Google search on Tangles, but do you have a website?

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:13:22

I do. www.kaysmith-blum.com Don't forget the hyphen, and it has all kinds of information about the book and links to buy in any which way you want on the front page, so you can't miss it. Awesome.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:13:39

And as I warned you at the beginning, what book or story inspires you the most?

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:13:46

So it's hard to name just one. I will say that for this particular tale, I was inspired by Meg Shipstead's Great Circle and also Marissa Silver's Mary Coin. But Lily King's euphoria continues to inspire. And at a point in my late twenties in terms of the historical fiction genre, I was just enthralled with everything Leon Uris wrote. That went on for about a decade. So I think what I've realized is it's not necessarily a story, but it's maybe the author that inspires me. I circle back to British authors and Irish authors as well just for the visceral way they describe things and the way they develop their characters. Lots of inspirations out there.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:14:30

Well, I think it's different to be a writer and to be a reader because you see things completely different than most readers.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:14:39

You do. Not to mention the typo or wait. They should have used a comma there. Yes.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:14:44

Absolutely. That is so true. Well, we are over our time, but it was worth it because you had some very interesting insights into this book, and I highly recommend that our listeners go out and get it. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Kay Smith-Blum [: 00:14:59

Thanks so much, Chrissy. I appreciate being here.

Kristi Leonard [: 00:15:05

Thanks for joining us. We hope you take a second to give us stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform, and we'll be here again next Wednesday. Follow us on Instagram at authorexpresspodcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget, keep it express, but keep it interesting.